Improvements to international categories!

Based on merchant feedback, we’ve been working to improve business categories. One of the key areas we thought we could quickly improve is expanding the breadth of available categories globally.

So you might be wondering: why hadn’t we already done that? Well, international business categorization is quite tricky. Imagine you’re planning a trip to Greece. When you search from the US, you’ll probably be using English, and you’ll see the categories of Greek businesses in English. However, those businesses in Greece were probably set in Greek using Places for Business in Greek. This means the Places for Business team has to translate and associate categories in many languages. As you can imagine, this can become very complicated very quickly.

Today, we are taking a first step of many to improve categories that merchants can use to represent their businesses. Specifically, we’re adding over 1,000 new categories in the new Places dashboard. These categories are available globally and translated to every language Google supports.

Last but not least, thanks to our Top Contributors and all the merchants who gave us great feedback. We’re indeed listening!

-Jade, Google Business Community Manager

Edit on February 14, 2014:

Additionally, we've just launched support for regional dialects in business categories on both Places for Business and Google Maps! As an example, an English speaking business owner in India can now choose the commonly used term Petrol Pump as their business category instead of the term Gas Station, which is uncommon in India. This new feature improves localization of business categories for more than a dozen countries.